She rebuilt herself after he broke her. Then the universe sent him back.
When hockey defenseman Cole Mercer is traded to the Pittsburgh Falcons - Mara Callahan's beat, her city, her problem - she does the only thing she knows how to do: she stays on the story. Three years after he shattered what they had on a night she still can't fully name, she tells herself she's over it. She tells herself she's a professional. She tells herself he is a source, he is a story, he is nothing else.
She writes it in her notebook. She underlines it twice. She almost believes it.
Cole didn't request the trade for the playoffs. He requested it for her. He's spent three years in therapy, wearing a ring on a chain against his chest, trying to become the man who deserved to knock on her door - knowing she might never open it. He isn't asking for anything. He's just done doing nothing.
What follows is not a clean reunion. There's no grand gesture that erases what he did, no single conversation that settles the debt. What there is: a documentary pairing neither of them asked for, a locker room where professionalism is both armor and lie, and an ice rink at six-fifty-eight in the morning where two people who destroyed something extraordinary are forced to decide - slowly, honestly, without any guarantees - whether it's possible to build it back stronger than it was.
Broken Ice, Second Fire is a deeply felt second-chance sports romance about forgiveness as a practice, love as a choice, and what it actually costs to stop standing very far away from the things that matter most.
Some fires go out. Some burn twice. This one was always going to find its way back.
If you love emotionally layered hockey romance, slow-burn tension, and love stories where the characters actually have to earn it, grab your copy today.
